


Of Freedom

by TheWingedSwine



Category: Attack on Titan, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Multi, Other, Past Abuse, Past Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29000508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWingedSwine/pseuds/TheWingedSwine
Summary: I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when I came across the island. Water to drink. Plants to eat. A quiet place to die.I could have left at any point after realizing the Hell I’d walked into.So why didn’t I?
Relationships: Erwin Smith & Original Female Character(s), Erwin Smith & Reader, Erwin Smith/Original Character(s), Erwin Smith/Original Female Character(s), Erwin Smith/Reader, Erwin Smith/You, Levi & Erwin Smith & Reader, Levi & Reader, Levi & Special Operations Squad | Squad Levi, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Original Character(s), Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Original Female Character(s), Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/Reader, Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin)/You, Levi/Erwin Smith/Original Female Character(s), Levi/Erwin Smith/Reader, Levi/Reader, Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Comments: 4
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

It was the early morning...or was it still night? The sun was nowhere. Only the wind in my face and the light of the stars guided me. My tears had dried sometime ago, and so had the blood that burrowed deep into the fibers of my clothes. An unforgiving reminder that I was worse than the beast I’d slain. 

These were the pieces of the war that would stay with me. Not Beretta’s severed head as it flew past me on the battlefield. Not the sea of corpses I rode past on my way home from the frontline, nor the dead silence of the fledgelings as Zenith began to announce her new world order. _ How couldn’t we see it? _

Her body hitting the ground, fingers twitching in the soft grasses that covered the Atherian hillside. The look on Samir’s face while I wiped my blade clean. _ How did we let it go on for so long? _

I used to think Zenith was a god. _ I’ve been wrong before... _

Even considering how far from home I’d already gotten, there was no question that Nemy would eventually find me. She would give me a smile that glistened deep in her eyes and dust me off, claiming that she knew me better than I knew myself and so on. I bet against myself, wagering it would take her five, no,  _three_ days  to catch up. But this time, when she tugged my sleeve to bring me back home, I wouldn’t go.  _ I’m getting very good at running away from the things I love. ... _

I hoped she wouldn’t leave me. I hoped she would sleep with me beneath the trees and eat berries and forget about the nightmare we left behind. We would be together and wake up to those dewy sunrises we loved so much- _ finally happy. _

Only... the trees that began to appear around me as land materialized below were not the kind I’d grown with in Atheria. They were sparse, scattered around an open plane of yellowish grass. The smell of this place was different. The wind thick with something I couldn’t place. my muscles began to strain and my lungs heaved hard against the heavy  _ something  _ pulling me to the ground.

I blinked, almost unable to open my eyes again, and shook my head when I realized I was back in the real world. It was easy to soldier on in the midst of my daydream. Easy to pretend I wasn’t exhausted when I was so deep in the fake world I created to distract myself from the truth.

Nemy would never come for me.

_ I wonder if anyone even bothered to pull Zenith’s sword out of her chest... _

For now the real world was too much.

**_ So instead I kept on dreaming. _ **


	2. Chapter 2

I’d always been told the race of men was to be avoided. They were beneath us.  _ Lesser than. _ The monks were adamant that anyone born without  the Gift of Eros was inferior; a sentiment with which Nemy strongly disagreed. People were people. They were us just as much as we were them, she would argue. They needed our help, the war was a misunderstanding, if only we could show them the way, and  _on and on and on_.  I didn’t know what to think when my eyes opened to darkness. To candle light and damp musk.

The reflection of a hundred deplorable eyes peering at me.

It was strange to see so many of them this close. They were in uniforms, stiff in posture and nervous in expression that only amplified when I rose from the dusty mattress they’d placed me on. The people huddled in the corners of the room spoke in hushed tones but I heard them like great trees falling in a silent forest. Thunderous. Punishing. I’d fallen asleep sometime before sunrise- dropped straight from the sky into the sharp, withered grass below. I felt it still. In my skull. In my spine. The immeasurable pain of running from my problems and  _failing_.

My leg moved in numb muscle memory but stopped at the high pitched rustle of metal hitting itself. My ankle was heavy. A large iron ball sat nearby.  _ The fuckers  chained me up. They put me in a  **cage**. _

My fingers curled around the rough bars of my prison, pulling slowly to see if I had a chance at warping them. Perhaps I could, but it would take time. A few minutes at least. Five. Maybe ten. More than long enough for my captors to somehow stop me from getting loose.

For a fleeting moment I wondered how many of them I could kill if I were suddenly free.  _ Nemy would be ashamed. _

I let out a long, slow breath and looked around. Was it night now? Was it even the same day? I couldn’t tell. There weren’t windows in this room. The sun was still nowhere. _ I deserve this. _

There was a small cluster directly in front of me. Stately postures and powerful presence. A woman with red hair branched off and brought her face close until our noses almost touched . 

The language being spoken was foreign but it wasn’t unfamiliar. I understood what she was asking, though I didn’t bother to respond, knowing she wouldn’t understand me in return.

Humans had a tendency not to listen. 

And this one was no different.

* * *

Hange stared hard at the creature as she stood, enticed by the mystery of it all; It was a wonder how she had survived her fall, let alone been well enough to walk around the cell the day after.

The creature behind the bars narrowed her eyes at the iron ball her foot was tethered to and stretched her wings wide until they hit brick on either side. the cell was too narrow for them to fan out completely so they flapped a bit, shedding a few feathers in the process.

It was deliciously _strange_.

_Delightfully_ bizarre.

Her scarred hands gripped the cell bars from the inside and Hange held her breath, waiting for the possibility of communication that never came. They’d carried her off in her sleep and put her in prison; of _course_ she wouldn’t want to talk to them.

Still, curiosity overtook Hange and she moved closer, until she could feel the warmth radiating from the thing on other side of the bars. Somewhere in the background, Levi’s ever-derisive drawl warned her against such proximity, but she remained where she was, straightening her glasses for a better look.

The stranger wore a crown of thorns atop her braided hair and a full suit of armor. Leather straps held a long red cape in place; empty were the spaces once occupied by a longsword and a skinning knife. Even the gloves she was wearing when they brought her in had been confiscated.

Hange had no doubt that would be sorted later. After all, there was no real reason to alert anyone of the incident; of  _her_.

For now, while Erwin decided tiredly what direction he should move in regarding the life of this strange beast, she would get her answers.

Naturally, the wings intrigued her the most. Full white with black tips like a stork. Had she been born with them? Did they grow over time or burst from her body all at once? “Are you in _pain_ ?” She asked loudly between the various other inquiries that plagued her anxious mind. “what _species_ are you?”

The questions were met with a slow blink of reddish amber eyes, a jerk of the left wing and a slow breath from the nose. _Oh_ what answer might she give? What miraculous secrets lay so far beyond their reach that they’d never seen something like her before?

No matter the case, Hange was _damn sure_ going to find out.

* * *

Erwin kept the creature in his peripheral. The thing that had fallen straight out of the sky in front of them and stood up without a single visible scratch only hours later.

“Can you _hear_ me?” Hange yelled directly into the other woman’s face through the bars“You really don’t have to be afraid to reply, Dear, the situation isn’t as bad as all that!”

In all fairness, stranger things had been happening recently- His mind strayed to the Yeager boy, who was surely still comatose at this moment from his battle with the female titan-  but there were no guidelines for any of these disasters, or blessings, as he would have it. No code or instruction manual for how he should proceed.

_ Damn it all. _

He wracked his brain for the smallest shards of an idea; a stepping stone to ease him into a logical solution, but none came. If he let the creature go free, out of some charitable act of mercy, there was no telling where she would go or who she would inform of their position.

_We might not find the Other Titan in time if that were the case._ His palm hovered over the key at his belt.  _ This would all be pointless. _

The thought was halted abruptly when he met her eye past Hange’s head. They were a bright hazel that was almost red in the dim light. patient and unassuming despite her unnerving stare. He caught the way her gaze cut to his hip. The way her breaths became labored, a white knuckled grip leaving little to the imagination.

Movement below her face caught his attention- horribly scarred hands making a beckoning gesture through the bars of her cell.

_ Over my dead body._

* * *

If I had to speak to anyone, I desperately hoped it wouldn’t have to be _her_. Her questions were invasive. Too foreword. Unsettling in enthusiasm- and I was already uncomfortable in all the ways I could be.

One of my wings spasmed hard and hit the wall, knocking debris loose from the dusty old brick. long feathers ached for a preen. My bones felt like snapped branches. The rage was suddenly gone and anxiety began to settle over me like a stormcloud in its place. It was cold in here, too crowded and too humid. There were too many voices and too many possible agendas to consider. If they were after my organs like the men from my homeland I might have been a corpse by now.  _Would that be such a terrible thing? _ I’d been ready to die since the moment I left home. I still was. But I didn’t want to die  _here_.

“I can see you’re a little shy,” the woman pushed her glasses up with her index finger, playful and friendly like a dog, but I couldn’t be bothered with the antics.

I didn’t belong in this hovel. I needed to get  out.

_ What time of day is it? _

My focus darted around the small clusters of what were obviously soldiers and eventually landed on the most regal. He was tall and angular with eyes as blue as the sea. A ring of keys glinted in the torchlight; jagged knives to shove into my back.

_ Where is the sun? _

My body wasn’t mine anymore. My left side sore and heavy. The iron bars were an impossible obstacle and I held the deepest hope that my willpower alone could make them warp ever so slightly in my grip, to no avail. In the end it wasn’t the keys that made me wave him over. It was the quiet. The quiet and my _nerves_. The need to do something other than  _nothing_. _Why is he standing so still?_

After some hesitation, visible in the way he eyed me up and down before moving, he came up just behind the red headed woman. Stoic. Calculated. Not a single one of his golden hairs out of place.

The strenuous questions subsided, so did the conversations of every single person in the dark little hole around us, as she cleared a path for the man, and my heart ceased violently in my chest. It shouldn’t have though. Not considering what  actually  came out of his mouth.

 _ Titles, titles, titles, objectives, questions, warnings.  _ His name was Commander  _ Something, something,  _ Scouts. Prisoner. Walls. Compliance. Nothing that interested me enough for a worthwhile response. Nothing that even halfway deserved one in the first place.

As he droned on and my composure waned, this time it was Nemy’s voice I heard inside my head.

_ They’ll never learn if no one teaches them. _

I found myself wondering why it had to be me. Indignant as ever, I imagined the temper tantrum I could throw if I were out in the wild somewhere. I’d never wanted to take out my frustration on the world around me so badly. 

My hand reached out, arm extending through the bars, around the red headed woman, until my face met metal from the effort and my palm could lay flat against the man’s chest. If my brief tenure as a soldier had taught me anything about humans, it was that none of them deserved my patience- nevermind the Kiss of Eros. They respected no one- held nothing dear to their hearts.

 _You have to teach them_ ,  Nemy said again.

I took my hand away and watched the Kiss work it’s wonders. He looked as if he were suffocating; red faced and already working into a sweat. His lips parted, breath heavy, but I waited.

There was a ruckus, of course there would be. Small soldiers holding up their leader, preventing him from collapse in a frenzy of limbs and worried inquiry.

_ “Commander, are you alright?” _

And:

_ “Everyone get out of here, stop crowding him!” _

Still, I waited. I watched as he stood tall again, with the help of his soldiers, and straightened the lapels of his jacket. His expression was bewildered but rife with clarity. I recalled the feeling clearly, from the tender years of my childhood. The feeling that there was more in the universe than the self.

He came to stand directly in front of me now, gaze fixed and chest no longer trembling. All sure signs that told me he was ready to understand.

And so I asked him, nicely, to let me out.


	3. Chapter 3

_ It was in the first days of autumn that we learned to fly._

_ Mama didn’t understand Da’s urgency, preferring to wait until summer, but she relented. We brought bedding and baskets of food for the journey. Berries and pemmican to keep us hale and hearty while we thrusted ourselves into the air. The small crevice where we settled was called the _ _Hook; a hanging rock that acted as a shelter away from our willow grove. Da was adamant- we would live in that cave until we could return home by flight. The sky would be our path and our wings would be our legs. _

_ Samir was the first to succeed, his wings already big and far stronger than mine or Nemia’s.   
_ _  
I was jealous of the way my father looked at him. A gem in our presence- a prodigy who could never fail. I struggled day and night to lift off from the sheer mountainside, only for Da to catch me each time. His happy grin and words of encouragement were still not enough to lift the melancholy. I wished I were better. I wished he loved me as much as he loved my brother._

_Nemia clung to my side in between each jump, giggling in tune with my bitter remarks about Samir’s spidery legs and how his eyes were too far apart._

_”you love him though,” she laughed, lacing her fingers with mine when I replied with a roll of my eyes._

_Of course I loved him._

_it would be a long time until I said it aloud again._

_we were nearly done for the day when it happened. I was so close. I could feel it- taste it. So close to success that I ran before I leaped_ _off the edge this time. My arms were spread wide and I could feel the chill beneath_ _my little wings, excited for the first time since leaving the grove. I inhaled so deep my lungs almost burst._

_and then-_

**_and then..._ **

_the wind was knocked from me as what I could tell was Da’s shoulder cut me off at the waist. He flew us back up to the mountain and I kicked and screamed against him, petulant and unwavering._

_it wasn’t fair._

_I was so close!  
_

_ it took me a long while of tantruming to realize the difference in Da. This time he didn’t smile at me. He didn’t wave his hand or pull me into his safe embrace. _

_ he looked out into the forest beside the mountain, silent as the grave, and I followed his focus to it. Something burning in the distance. A sour smell on the breeze. _

_He never looked back at me “Take Samy and Nemy inside.” _

_I did. I took their hands, breaths ragged and eyes darting, to pull them back to the Hook._

_ We huddled to our mother at the edge, where we could still see Da. The whole world seemed to stand still as we watched him, a statue at the drop of the cliff, save for the gentle sway of his feathers in the high wind. _

_ A long, harsh sound, like the crack of thunder, startled everyone._

_ My mother’s soft wings circled us while my father leaned further over the edge for a better look. _

_ The five of us peered out into the open air to watch the birds scatter in all direction, fleeing from the sound. _

_ “It’s nothing,” Da said when he came back to us._

**_ It’s nothing. _ **

* * *

Erwin braced himself to be pulled; slammed into the bars in an attempt to reach the cell keys. His breath hitched and his muscles locked in place to prevent him from jerking back when her hand, the scar tissue that webbed across her knuckles far more clear now, made contact with his body. Her palm was warm for a moment through the thin barrier his shirt provided.

And then it wasn’t.

At first it was panic. The marrow of his bones felt cold and blood rushed to his head too quickly. He gasped, he fumbled, and to his right, Levi ordered everyone out of the room.

“The Zoo is closed; go about your business.”

In his head the sound was a crescendo- not just the shuffling steps of a few dozen shaken trainees filing out of the room, but the thunderous applause of an infinite theater. There were explosions and lightning and a great sense of doom. Terrified frenzy that subsided into... _peace_.

A pristine calm that drifted gently from his body into his subconscious.

His comrades helped him stand tall again. He took in a deep breath.

And then she spoke.

He wasn’t exactly sure what the hell he was hearing. The sound that came from her was an eerie hum- a hundred voices out of the same mouth all at once, but he understood every word.

“ _Interesting_.” Hange’s hand came to rest at her own lips in puzzlement. “It seems she doesn’t speak the common language.”

_What?_ hadn’t she heard it?

“Will you please let me go?” The winged woman repeated in a whisper softer than the last, raven black brows pulling together impatiently. _“I need to see the sun.”_

However weak he felt now, however calm, Erwin was at least grateful the experience hadn’t stripped away his resolve, which remained absolute. He swallowed hard against the grit of his desert dry throat. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Her hands fell from the bars and she stepped away, further into the darkness of the small space. Up close, in her stillness, he saw the blood caked to her sleeves, the dents in her rusted breastplate, the shadows beneath her eyes.

He moved closer, purposely brushing shoulders with Hange to root himself more firmly in reality as he addressed the nearly red eyed woman. “What exactly did you do to me?”

“I gave you The Gift.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, muffled by the angle of her mouth as she turned away. She shifted a bit, one massive wing jerking backward in a wince as she tried to use it as a barrier. Erwin could barely make out her body behind the wall of feathers. “Congratulations. Now you can see past your nose.”

He wasn’t entirely sure it was something to celebrate but there was nowhere to move in this situation except foreward. He could stand there all day, Levi and Hange at his side in silent loyalty, but there was no room for that kind of indulgence. No time to figure out how he felt or what questions to ask next while the world went on without them. “Perhaps I can offer something in return.” He said carefully, eyeing her wing. “I’d like to have my associate examine you.”

she seemed to think on it, the proposal making her visibly uncomfortable though all he had to go by was a sliver of her face through a wall of white.

“ _ **no**_.”


End file.
